


Kowalski and Soul

by Brigantine



Category: due South
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-07-26
Updated: 2011-07-26
Packaged: 2017-10-22 05:25:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,519
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/234318
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Brigantine/pseuds/Brigantine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ray discovers a murder victim too late to save her, and Fraser alone can't fix the damage in Ray's head.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Kowalski and Soul

**Author's Note:**

> For the DS Flashfiction Episode Title challenge, much angstiness. A grim subject and the aftermath, but actual violence is off-stage.

On a warm Tuesday evening Ray is standing on the pitcher's mound of the Girls' Club athletic field, arguing with Audrey Carmichael over the question of a ball or a strike when he told her to throw fast and low, but she decided to throw fast and high, because she was better at fast and high. Which is exactly Ray's point.

He wouldn't be here at all, except that his friend Wendy, who normally coaches the girls' baseball team, needed to go back to Cincinnati to care for her father, who had somehow managed to get himself run over by a bakery truck while he was out jogging early one morning, and Wendy called up Ray at 5:09 a.m. on a Saturday and wheedled, "Pleeeeeeeeeez, they won't have a coach and the team will be canceled and they're a really good team this year and a great bunch of kids--" and Ray, befuddled by lack of sleep, and distracted by a warm Mountie making sweet little half-awake noises in the bed next to him agreed, "Yeah, yeah, sure, whatever," just to get her to shut up.

But it's okay, because they really are a great bunch of kids, even if they are all girls, and annoying sometimes - especially Audrey, who stands about five feet nothing, and weighs maybe a hundred pounds soaking wet, with lots of red hair and the attitude to match.

Ray points both forefingers at her for emphasis. "You need the practice on those low pitches, you diminutive knucklehead! That's why we're all standing out here - so all o' you can practice the stuff you still suck at!"

He hears a soft snort of laughter at his right shoulder, knows their catcher has come out to the mound to see what all the fuss is. Karen Vargas; tall, slender, black hair, black eyes, the older sister of three boys whose father isn't around much.

Audrey juts her chin out at Ray and glares up at him from under the bill of her baseball cap. "Fine. Have it your way." Which is her way of admitting Ray's right.

He bats the cap down over her eyes.

"Asshole."

"Munchkin." Ray grins and saunters back to home plate, Karen easy beside him.

"One of these days," she warns, "Aud's gonna nut you with a fast one just to take you down a peg, then what're you gonna do?"

Ray shrugs, "Cry, probably."

Karen is Audrey's best friend. He suspects they've guessed about him and Fraser, mostly on account of neither of them flirts with Ben when he comes around, which is cool, if a little unsettling. Too shrewd by half, the both of 'em.

 

10:13 that same night, Ray is crouched beside a blue Ford Escort parked behind the Lakeshore Community College library, trying to keep a slender brunette from bleeding out in his arms, and shouting into his cell phone for an ambulance. He's tried applying pressure to her wounds, but God, he's only got two hands.

He stopped here at the college library looking for a book Fraser couldn't find at the public library, and when he came out, loaded down with all kinds of weird books on bugs, including "Butterflies and Things That Eat Them," which was Ray's particular choice, he thought he heard something peculiar off to the left.

He was only a few yards away from where he'd parked the Goat, and when he neared the place he thought the peculiar noise had come from, Ray spotted a guy in a dark hoodie running off into the darkness across the parking lot, but even with his glasses on there was no way he could see clearly in the gloom. Then all of his attention was taken up by a pretty girl covered in blood and gasping for breath on the asphalt, her car keys on the ground glinting in the weird, jittery yellow glow from the parking lot lamps.

Ray holds her tight and babbles into her ear, urging her to hang on, and she tries to talk back to him, but all that comes out of her mouth is a wheeze of air, and blood she can't afford to lose. She clutches at his wrist, but her grip is weak, and by the time the ambulance arrives in a blaze of sirens and followed by a noisy blue and white, she just can't hold on anymore.

Half an hour later he's in the emergency room of a hospital he's already forgotten the name of, and he begins going over the details with Jack Huey. Jack tells him the girl's name is Shelly Kennedy. Ray starts to shake suddenly, to feel too light, like he's coming apart. He's having trouble finishing sentences. Jack takes a long look at him, and says, "I'll get you some coffee, Ray. Don't move."

Ray needs something to lean against. His legs won't hold him, but he can't make himself sit still. He leans his forehead against the wall, wishes he were home under a hot shower, scrubbing his skin, just scrubbing and scrubbing.

He is methodically beating his head against the wall when a woman's hand catches his bruising forehead on the downbeat, and turns him toward her. Ray realizes who she must be the moment their eyes meet. He can not possibly force his mouth to form the words, "Multiple stab wounds."

Maybe because she wants desperately to hold her daughter right now, maybe because she understands how freaked out Ray is, or how hard he tried, Shelly Kennedy's mother puts her arms around Ray and pulls him in, bloody clothes and all, and he falls against her and sobs like a little kid.

By the time he arrives at the precinct late Wednesday morning he's had time to learn about Shelly. He has learned that she tutored algebra, that she was attending community college in order to make a math scholarship go further, so she could transfer later to Illinois State. She was majoring in mechanical engineering. She had a boyfriend named David, stunned to slack-jawed silence and too short to have been the guy Ray saw in the parking lot.

Shelly was a nice girl from a nice family from a nice neighborhood, and Ray hasn't been able to shake the image of Shelly's little sister Jennifer, standing with her arms wrapped tight around herself, wide-eyed and shivering as though something inside her was already turning blue with cold and loneliness, and their father looking lost and bereft, looking like he believed he had failed utterly as a father and as a man, as though the very heart of him had been cut out.

This morning Ray is sleep-deprived, razor-edged, and snarling. Frannie makes a swift evaluation of his mood, sneaks a cup of decaf onto his desk, and disappears. Ray's colleagues are accustomed to his impatient temperament, but today Ray is looking for a fight, and no one can concentrate for fear of him suddenly exploding. Most of them quickly discover that there are other places they urgently need to be.

Forty-five minutes in, Welsh informs Ray that he's got plenty of sick time coming, and that he should take some of it. "Now, Detective!"

Ray doesn't argue.

Though it would be easier to simply call, Ray stops by the consulate to tell Fraser he'll be at home, maybe because he needs to see Fraser, even just for a minute, or maybe it's the draw of the consulate itself, calm and familiar, and he's stalling before he returns to his apartment to be alone with an awful lot of unwelcome thoughts.

Turnbull informs Ray gently that Constable Fraser is currently in conference with Inspector Thatcher, but that he won't be long, and he urges Ray to please make himself comfortable. Ray hasn't sat for more than half a minute, Dief trotting up to him nosy and immediately sympathetic, before Turnbull is pressing a hot cup of heavily sweetened coffee into his hands. Ray mutters his thanks and decides that boyfriend-wise Frannie could do a lot worse. It's the closest thing to a happy, or even a normal thought he's had in the last twelve hours.

When Fraser shows up about halfway through the cup of coffee his face is solemn, that little line he gets between his eyes twitching with concern, and he tells Ray, "Lieutenant Welsh called. I'm coming home with you."

Ray only nods, grateful that Fraser knows to offer what Ray can't think straight enough to ask for.

Thatcher, hot on Fraser's heels as usual, opens her mouth, probably to assign him some new stupid thing to do, but she takes a quick glance at Ray, and she changes tack abruptly, muttering low and serious in Fraser's ear, "Call in if necessary tomorrow, Constable," like she's sending Fraser on a dangerous mission. He could call it woman's intuition, but Thatcher is a cop, after all.

When they get back to Ray's place Fraser makes tea that Ray appreciates but doesn't drink, a sandwich that smells good but that Ray can't swallow, and they end up wound together on the couch, not saying anything, Ray letting the heat from Fraser's body ward off the chill that shakes him, until that isn't enough, until he's begging Fraser, "Ben, please, please," and then they're in Ray's bed.

Fraser rides Ray hard, harder than Fraser is comfortable with, but he is trying to give Ray what he needs, and he takes his time, doing it face to face, watching Ray, holding him still, letting his heavier body press down on Ray, anchor him in place. Fraser uses Ray until he is raw and hurting, silent tears running down his cheek bones and into his ears, and it still isn't enough to drown out the other pain, but Ray is too exhausted to argue when Fraser stops, his face buried in Ray's neck, and his body shaking from the effort.

"Ray, please. I'm hurting you. I can't."

Ray lets Fraser kiss him, allows him to be gentle. Fraser curls around him in the dark, caressing him and crooning in Inuktitut. Ray has no idea what the words are saying, but in Fraser-speak it means "I love you," and he keeps talking, as though the soft current of his voice can somehow wash away the rage and the horror. When he falls asleep Ray doesn't dream, so maybe Fraser is on to something. Maybe Ben is his dream catcher. That's the one thing that makes any sense to Ray right now.

 

Thursday Ray shows up to baseball practice, tries to leave Shelly Kennedy and the sticky feel of her lifeblood between his fingers behind him, but he's surrounded by girls just a couple of years younger than she was, nudging and shoving one another happily on their way to the outfield, snapping their gum on the sidelines, and the sound of their laughter today seems more precious and more painful than he can bear. He is wound tight and short-tempered, and sniping like a son of a bitch, and at the top of the fifth inning Audrey Carmichael calls him on it.

Red hair sparking in the summer evening, Audrey throws her glove down on the ground like a gauntlet at his feet, and demands, "Jesus fuck, Ray, what the hell's the matter with you?"

He has no words for her, only the memory of Shelly struggling for breath and fading steadily while he pleaded with her to hang on, and the look on Audrey's face changes from exasperation to alarm. Ray's peripheral vision registers his team coming in from the field to gather around him, and Audrey pushes gently at him, guiding him back onto the dugout bench, and she makes him sit.

Maybe a bunch of teenage girls shouldn't know what to do with a Chicago cop melting down in front of them, but Karen Vargas has got three younger brothers who look to her to figure things out. She kneels in front of Ray, looks him in the eyes, and she asks him, "Ray. What happened?"

There's an instinct in him, a wish to spare his girls what he's seen, to spare them the burden, just to shrug it off and say it's nothing, merely that work has been rough, that he's sorry he's been a jerk, and let it go at that, but that's the trap, isn't it, trying to shield a girl from the violence of the world she lives in, only to leave her that much more vulnerable to it, and Ray won't do it. He can't.

Ray tells them about Shelly Kennedy. He describes the way she died, the suddenness and the violence of it, reveals that she left behind a remarkable mother and a shattered younger sister, and a father who blames himself for not being there when she needed him. He confesses that he doesn't know who killed her or why, but he knows that she hardly put up a fight, not because she didn't want to live, but because she didn't know how, and he keeps wondering why, when daughters live in the same screwed up world that sons do, fathers don't teach their daughters the same survival skills they teach their sons, why a father doesn't teach his daughter...

"...how to make a goddamn fist!"

Ray rubs the heels of his hands into his eyes, lets his hands fall back into his lap. "Jesus Christ, she never had a chance. She didn't know anything, no one ever thought to teach her how to fight back!" He feels a fool, a grown man and a cop spilling his guts to a bunch of kids, but they need to know the truth, don't they?

Then Audrey, crouching in the summer dust next to Karen, takes one of Ray's hands and turns it over, and she extends the back of her hand flat against his palm. Ray stares at Audrey's hand as it rests there; dirty, callused, nails bitten short, a strong hand, but slender-boned and with less muscle mass than a hand belonging to any boy her size, and he is terrified for her in the moments before she asks, as though she hasn't already figured it out on her own, "So show me how to make a proper fist, Ray."

Ray considers that small hand, the natural fineness of a woman's frame compared to a man's. He considers torque, load, what's in the brain pan, how fragile even a big man's knees are, that a girl at ease with a baseball bat might make use of a length of old pipe in an alley, or a sharpened pencil, or a screwdriver. He thinks about how smart his girls are, how they're already learning to think on their feet, to perform with grace under pressure.

Karen's dark eyes are steady on him, Audrey's hand waiting warm against his, and Ray feels a fierce, protective heat rise in his chest. He carefully curls Audrey's fingers snug into her palm, crosses her thumb tight against her fingers, and his voice is steady when he agrees, "Okay, then."

 

\--#--


End file.
